Want a book blurb from Margaret Atwood? Expect a poem instead. Atwood has retired from the blurbing business and now declines in rhyming verse. “But now I am aging; my brain is all shrunk,/And my adjective store is depleted;/My hair’s getting stringy, I walk as though drunk;/ As a quotester I’m nigh-on defeated.” Pair with our essays on the blurbing blunder: a history of blurbs, blurbs as publicity stunts, and the fundamental question — to blurb or not to blurb?
Rhyme and Reason
Must-Read Books for Kids
School hasn’t started back up yet, so if you’re looking for ways to entertain your kids until the end of Summer, I recommend perusing NPR’s round-up of “100 Must-Reads For Kids 9-14.” (Or, you know, tell them to just go outside already. And to be sure to shut the door to keep the air conditioning in.)
●
●
Hazlitt, will publish.
Random House Canada launched a new website yesterday, and a new internet magazine to go along with it. There's a piece from Hari Kunzru on Werner Herzog, and I'm especially taken with this one from Emily Landau on Christopher Hitchens and David Rakoff.
●
●
Great American History Puzzle
Jeopardy! champion, Maphead author, and all-around puzzle whiz Ken Jennings has devised a month-long “Great American History Puzzle,” and the grand prize winner will receive a free trip to Washington D.C., as well as a “Secrets of the Smithsonian” tour no doubt reminiscent of touring the back room at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie.
“The best house bourbon was Ten High”
Following up their publication of Charles Portis’s “Motel Life, Lower Reaches" online, the Oxford American brings us a speech in verse by Jay Jennings, the editor of a recent compilation of Portis’s work (which our own Bill Morris reviewed). Jennings delivered an ode to Portis to mark the author winning the Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. Sample quote: “But you read the next book because the main character was from Little Rock,/and you knew no other book where the main character was from Little Rock/and you wanted to write a book about Little Rock."
Kids These Days
“The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years,” says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning.
●
●
Outsourcing Tech Manufacture and the Cost of the Kindle
According to Steve Denning at Forbes, "the U.S. has lost or is on the verge of losing its ability to develop and manufacture a slew of high-tech products." He says the U.S. will never be able to manufacture a Kindle on its own soil. But if the environmental cost of producing just one e-reader, as VQR's Ted Genoways says, is "roughly the same as fifty books," why would anyone want to?
●
●
P.D. James Passes Away
Author P.D. James, "the Queen of crime writing" and subject of one of our Post-4o Bloomers essays, has passed away, reports the BBC.
●
●
Kindle Jollies
Nicholson Baker has written the funniest piece yet about the Kindle. Ed initially takes umbrage (and gets comments from Baker and recants somewhat). YPTR weighs in as well.
●
●